Retail stores operate in a very competitive marketplace involving a wide variety of customer preferences. Retailers try to keep up with a dynamic customer involving fluctuating buying patterns, disloyalty, channel surfing (hunt and gather patterns across retail channels), frustration due to a lack of personal attention, and other customer preference changes. Retailers are also faced with difficulty in assessing their on-hand availability of merchandise, training new personnel in a high turnover business, wasted time in managing and locating inventory, and handling returns. All of the above difficulties lead to overall customer dissatisfaction and deterioration of customer loyalty resulting in lost sales and high operational costs.
Some technological approaches have been developed to address these problems to provide a more competitive retail operation. For example, Bancroft and Ward in U.S. Patent Application US 2002/0165790 A1 describe use of a mobile robot for operation in a retail environment. The robot moves throughout the retail store, monitoring the retail environment and responding to customer requests when a human store clerk is not available. The robot may output information either verbally or in writing based on input from the customer and sales data. U.S. Pat. No. 6,584,375 by Bancroft and Ward describe the robot in further detail.
Pugliese et al. in WIP publication WO 02/47001 A2 describe a system and method for making an on-line store work more like a real, brick and mortar, store. Shoppers initiate an e-sales call with a live sales person who shows them a product via networked live Internet enabled cameras. The live sales person responds to inquiries to demonstrate or display the product in real time. On-line shoppers therefore have an experience that is similar to on-site shopping by interfacing with a live salesperson while being able to view the product from various angles as if they were viewing it in person. Other shoppers may join in the session.
Shopper assistance may also be provided by technological animation of a live sales assistant or the use of voice recognition and voice response capabilities.
Rofrano in U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,283 describes use of a software provided virtual sales person to improve the shopper experience to a user of an electronic catalog.
The patents and applications described above, namely US 2002/0165790 A1, U.S. Pat. No. 6,584,375, U.S. Pat. No. 6,035,283, and WO 02/47001 A2 are all incorporated herein by reference.
Despite these and other developments, there remains significant customer dissatisfaction with current retail operations resulting in lost sales which could be captured by development of an improved retail environment. Retail stores using improved environment capability and techniques will therefore have an advantage in this highly competitive market. It is believed that development of such improvements would constitute a significant advancement in the retail sales acts.